And in a somewhat interesting coincidence, the High Court order comes in the backdrop of renewed international condemnation of suicide bombings as a crime against humanity.

This Friday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a 170-page report, reasoning out as to exactly why suicide bombers are guilty of war crimes. At the base of this reasoning was the acknowledgement that the bombings deliberately target civilians, making the perpetrators guilty of crimes against humanity.

Friday's report focuses mainly on the Israeli-Palestine conflict but draws important parallel lessons for countries in which suicide bombers predominate. The Report concludes that leaders of Palestinian groups should face criminal investigation.

It also dismisses the counter argument by armed groups that state attacks which kill or injure civilians can be legitimately met by terror strikes that target civilians. The bottom line is clear; under no circumstances can deliberate attacks against civilians be condoned.

Importantly, the activist group which has earned a reputation for itself as a non partisan human rights monitoring body, refers particularly to the fact that principles of international law require that those in authority be held accountable when people under their control commit war crimes or crimes against humanity.

"The people who carry out suicide bombings are not martyrs, they're war criminals, and so are the people who help plan such attacks," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They clearly fall under the category of crimes against humanity."

Friday's report by Human Rights Watch follows an equally harsh condemnation of the tactics of suicide bombings by a fellow activist lobbying group, Amnesty International (AI) in July this year. AI also categorized suicide bombings as crimes against humanity.

As far as the conflict in the Middle East is concerned, the strong positions taken by both groups is in the background of a balanced critique of the role played by both parties in the brushing aside of human rights and humanitarian law concerns.

International law context within which condemnation of suicide bombings take place is clear. Rules for the conduct of wars and armed liberation actions are found in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two additional protocols in relation to international and non-international armed conflicts. The Geneva principles stress the fact that targeting civilians, whether on purpose or by gross negligence, is unlawful. In recent times, the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has also added a new dimension to the discussions. Sri Lanka's High Court order is therefore unsurprising in the reinforcing of these well known principles of humanitarian law and finds echoes in this sense in the jurisprudence coming out of the Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice (HCJ). Common trends of judicial reasoning is discernible not only in the judicial responses to attacks that kill civilians but also in the manner in which the courts have tried to answer other dilemmas of the law in dealing with norms of human rights and humanitarian law in times of war. Thus, there are interesting similarities as well as points of departure in the manner in which the Israeli HCJ has ruled regarding the use of force by Israel's security services in interrogating detainees suspected of terror activities. The HCJ has ruled that the use of physical pressure is unauthorised and constitutes criminal offense, even in cases of a "ticking bomb" where there is an imminent threat of a terrorist attack, subject only to the general defense of "necessity". The HJC has further ruled that the "necessity" defense, even in a "ticking bomb" cases, could only be established as an ex post defense to a criminal charge, not as an immunity afforded to the interrogators beforehand.

Meanwhile, the political environment within which Sri Lanka's order was pronounced this week is, of course, a different reality altogether. Nevertheless, the severity of the content of the order reminds us (as it should) of the fact that accountability, in whatever circumstances, cannot be dispensed with as easily as political expediency demands.

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